aa5874

But it is NOT true at all that the author of "Refutation of All Heresies" cities Irenaeus extensively.

The name Ireneus is ONLY mentioned 3 times in book 6 of "Refutation of All Heresies" and NO actual passage from "Against Heresies" and no real details about "Against Heresies" are in "Refutation of ALL Heresies".

And further, the author of Refutation of All Heresies" referred to Irenaeus as a presbyter NOT as a bishop.

These references are ALL that is FOUND about the presbyter Irenaeus in ALL of "Refutation of ALL Heresies".


"Refutation of ALL Heresies" 37
"Refutation of ALL Heresies" 50
So, Irenaeus was NOT known as a bishop up to the writing of "Refutation of ALL Heresies" and there is NO EXTENSIVE citing of "Irenaeus"


How in the world can an anonymous writer, an UNKNOWN bishop, confirm that "Irenaeus" wrote at around 175-180 CE when in the very writings of the ANONYMOUS writer he DID NOT even state or name title of the books that were written by Irenaeus?

And please name the earliest copy of "Refutation of ALL Heresies".

The ANONYMOUS author of "Refutation of ALL Heresies" mentioned a presbyter called Irenaeus NOT a bishop, and did NOT state at all anywhere that the presbyter wrote 5 books called "Against Heresies".

And further, the ANONYMOUS author of "Refutation of ALL Heresies" did NOT state anywhere that he had a Greek copy of "Against Heresies".

It just simply does NOT appear to be true that the author of "Refutation of ALL Heresies" attributed Adversus Haereses to a bishop called Irenaeus when he neither mentioned Adversus Haereses by name or a BISHOP called Irenaeus.

And it should be noted that "Refutation of ALL Heresies" was once attributed to Origen.

avi

Sorry, Toto, usually, you are correct, and I am wrong. This time, you have erred...

Read it carefully, please.

"rediscovered it".

What does it mean, for example, to write, "Toto rediscovered the second law of thermodynamics."?
Does that English not convey the notion that Toto personally conducted the experiments, which led to the discovery of entropy? Oh yes, Sadi Carnot, a couple of centuries before Toto, also made the same discovery. In other words, two independent scientists, Carnot, and Toto, oblivious of one another's pursuits, accomplished the same task, performed the identical experiments, and arrived at precisely the same end result.

Isn't that what we mean, when we write, "rediscovered" it? We are so fortunate that Toto defined entropy for us, because no one knew about Carnot. Is it proper English, in your opinion, to write that Toto rediscovered Entropy, instead of acknowledging that Toto simply copied Carnot's work, while deliberately concealing the fact that Carnot's methods, data, and interpretation provided the entire corpus of Toto's discovery? Do you sincerely write that Posner was not intentionally seeking to extol the contributions of Copernicus, when in fact, Copernicus was not a scientist, and not a mathematician, and not the discoverer of heliocentrism. He was nothing more than a plagiarist.

Posner is a fraud, for writing a book about plagiarism, and then deliberately concealing, (hide in plain sight) within his wretched tome, the most egregious example of this academic malady.

Copernicus was merely a medical student, with an interest in astronomy, living in Italy, where he chanced upon a Greek manuscript of Aristarchus, (including all of the latter's computations) carefully brought to Italy by the monks who had fled Constantinople (three decades earlier, carrying with them scores of ancient Greek documents) to Italy, where they started the Renaissance.

For many months, I puzzled over this question. Posner is engaged in actual deception, that's not what I was puzzled about. I was puzzled about his motive. Why is he writing that Copernicus "rediscovered" heliocentrism, when he knows, contrarily that Copernicus plagiarized Aristarchus?

I wonder about Posner's ethnicity? Perhaps his ancestors were also Polish? I really have no good answer for this question, but I do not believe that he simply erred. It is a book about deception, fraud, and plagiarism, and he has committed all of those, himself. Why?

I don't know. I have met many very bright, very talented folks from several Polish universities, and none of them had ever heard of Aristarchus. They were all, uniformly, aghast, when I explained that Copernicus himself, performed no experiments, and simply copied the results of Aristarchus. Some of them were annoyed. A few were angry. A couple were belligerent. All of them, without exception, listened attentively, but found my explanation wanting, for my version was so completely at variance with what they had learned, since childhood.


yes, that's fine, Toto, but, my question is simple: How does the head of the outlawed Christian church in the capital of the Roman Empire avoid detection?

I see many possibilities.

Here's one: the Roman soldiers were inefficient, clumsy, and inept.
Here's another: The persecution of Christians was greatly exaggerated.
here's another: Hegesippus was not the most important, and most influential theologian of the Christian religion, in that era. (i.e. why would the Roman soldiers bother looking for someone who was so insignificant....)

For sake of completeness, one should also include the notion that maybe the Christian church in Rome had not been outlawed, at the time of Hegesippus?

avi

Toto

You miss the point. If you are correct, Posner was in error, although he might argue that Copernicus discovered the law by reading Aristarchus.

My point is that he wasn't writing about Copernicus. He was using the familiar story of Copernicus "rediscovering" heliocentrism to illustrate another point.


Why do you think that Posner knew any of this? His area of expertise is modern American law and politics.

The Roman state seems to have been haphazard in its persecution of Christians. There might have been laws on the books against secret societies, but the state did not invest in secret police to ferret out Christians. The machinery of state was not even remotely as efficient as modern totalitarian societies.

GakuseiDon

I think that it had been outlawed as an organization for most of the Second Century, if we look at the bulk of the extant Second Century apologetic writings, from Justin Martyr, to Tatian, to Tertullian. This was true of quite a few organizations with religious or political implications. People could be punished for just being a member, though in many cases they probably weren't sought out. Tertullian talks about this in regards to Christianity in his Apology:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...tullian01.html

The outcry is that the State is filled with Christians--that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands: they make lamentation, as for some calamity, that both sexes, every age and condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the Christian faith...

For the younger Pliny, when he was ruler of a province, having condemned some Christians to death, and driven some from their stedfastness, being still annoyed by their great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan, the reigning emperor, as to what he was to do with the rest, explaining to his master that, except an obstinate disinclination to offer sacrifices, he found in the religious services nothing but meetings at early morning for singing hymns to Christ and God, and sealing home their way of life by a united pledge to be faithful to their religion, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, and other crimes. Upon this Trajan wrote back that Christians were by no means to be sought after; but if they were brought before him, they should be punished.

I love this next part, where Tertullian mocks Trajan's suggestion:

O miserable deliverance,--under the necessities of the case, a self-contradiction! It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it commands them to be punished as guilty. It is at once merciful and cruel; it, passes by, and it punishes... The Christian alone must not be sought, though he may be brought and accused before the judge; as if a search had any other end than that in view And so you condemn the man for whom nobody wished a search to be made when he is presented to you, and who even now does not deserve punishment, I suppose, because of his guilt, but because, though forbidden to be sought, he was found.

PhilosopherJay

Hi avi,

Tertullian does give us a good deal of information about himself in his writings and unlike some early Christian writers, he does make a number of references to current events in his time, so we are able to date at least some of his works. The fact that he does write some quite non-orthodox stuff, supporting Montanism, for example, allows us to argue that he is not just a later invention of the Orthodox Church.

These things are more problematical with Irenaeus where we have to rely much more heavily on Eusebius for basic information about him.

The question about the similarity of material found in Irenaeus and Tertullian is I think an important one. I am not sure who copied whom or even if material from Tertullian might have been mislabeled as belonging to Irenaeus.

Usually polemics and descriptions of contemporary groups change over a rather short period of time, If one, for example looks at how one party characterizes a rival party today and ten years ago, one will find that much material is the same, but names and specific examples change. For example, the Republican party still talks about the Democratic party as being the tax and spend party, but they accuse President Obama instead of President Clinton of doing it.

The similarity of the description of heretics and heretical groups suggest that regardless of who wrote them first or even who wrote them that they should be treated as coming from approximately the same time period. I think circa 200-210 is a reasonable date for this material, given the current events that Tertullian mentions in these and other works.

Mark Timithy Riley did his dissertation on Tertullian, so he studied the guy pretty seriously. He took the trouble to read the Greek versions available of some of his works and the Latin versions of Irenaeus. His opinion that Tertullian did not use a Latin translation, directly contradicted the previous received wisdom of some who had examined the question, and he argues I think well enough that it is worth considering as more probable than not that Tertullian is getting his information directly from a Greek text.

Apparently, most scholars do agree that the Latin copy of Adv. Haer. is a poor translation from a previous Greek text. I do not know enough about the Latin of the manuscript to be able give an opinion. It does not seem very important in helping us to date the original writing, so I am quite willing to go along with Dr. Riley, unless good arguments are made against going along with it.

Again, I think the important issue is that the Tertullian and Irenaeus text should be dated to the same time period and the standard statements that Irenaeus wrote in 180 and Tertullian copied from a Latin translation made in the early 200's has little basis in facts or reason. Both texts are more likely to be from the early 200's.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

mountainman

The operative word is "seems", based upon the literary assertions of Eusebius alone.
We have no evidence of any attributes of "early christians" including their "persecution".
The Christian REVOLUTION of the 4th century may have invented its own propaganda.


It did in the epoch of Constantine. Soldiers were used to search for forbidden books and it was the death penalty if you were caught preserrving these books from the state fire. See Eusebius' VC, and the letters of Constantine about Porphyry and Arius after Nicaea.

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,

I certainly agree with you very much that .... usually polemics and descriptions of contemporary groups change over a rather short period of time, If one, for example looks at how one party characterizes a rival party today and ten years ago, one will find that much material is the same, but names and specific examples change..

It is interesting to note that the author of the "Christian Church History" was also responsible for the polemical treatise "Against Hierocles", who apparently (according to Eusebius) was trying to compare the rise of Jesus under Constantine to the already extant political support for the Graeco-Roman sage and holy man Apollonius of Tyana.

To compound matters we have outrageous 4th century imperial forgeries of the profane history of the ROman Emperors ("Historia Augusta") to contend with in the available evidence, which indicate a common modus operandi of common forgery.

Reliance upon Tertullian as a real historical person according to my reading of the ancient historian Momigliano is subject to criticism. Eusebius is a very suspect source. Eusebius cannot be ruled out for example as the sponsored editor-in-chief of the "Historia Augusta" dedicated to Constantine. At the end of the day IMO we need to separate out the conjectures and the evidence, and then ask what it is that the evidence alone suggests for a chronology of the rise of the "Christian Church".

DCHindley

Shouldn't we separate in our thinking the estimated dates of composition for the gospels (based on internal evidence - statements and phrases used in the gospels that are compared to known or proposed events of history) from the approximate dates they are first mentioned by name (external evidence, based on references to individual gospels by external sources that can be dated in some way)?

That being said, you are correct that Irenaeus is the first to mention the four gospels as the only gospels that should be considered authoritative by Christians. In fact, until Irenaeus, any one non-canonical book cites maybe only one, two or at most a handful of NT books (either quoted or unquestionably alluded to, although not all are named). Starting with in Irenaeus' AH, virtually all of the NT books are cited. This kind of evidence is what prompts critics like Trobisch to propose that the NT books were published as a unified edition prior to the likely time of publication of Irenaeus' AH (before 180 CE), and to offer the suggestion that it may have been published by Polycarp of Smyrna.

Still, that the "canonical edition" includes four gospels suggests that these four books had some circulation as independent works before this publication as a group. However, for whatever reason, no trace of these independently circulating books has survived. I would think that the "canonical edition" of the gospels was heavily promoted by the likes of Irenaeus, generating a popularity that quickly overshadowed the earlier independent gospels floating about. Other here would suggest that this is "proof" that they were all fictions created at the same time. Of that I doubt, as the obvious question presents itself: "Why then four gospels that are all different in orientation and in use of sources or traditions, and not one really good one?"

Note that Riley says Irenaeus' AH provided practically everything he knew about Valentinians. If you have ever followed heresiologists, you will learn that each successive one seems to base his exposition on works that immediately preceded him. Tertullian and Hippolytus and Epiphanius all used Irenaeus, and and you can follow the accounts they borrowed as they get twisted around and utterly confused, suggesting that all these later heresiologists were going from hearsay, not from facts they directly researched, despite their claims to have done so.

Are you suggesting that Tertullian wrote AH in Greek, or in Latin? Either way, Tertullian seems to have had a first rate education in both Greek and Latin literature, and Latin AH is kind of crude, unbefitting of a man of his education. So if Tertullian did write it, it would have to have been in Greek, which is relatively good (for kione). However, the citations he make of it is in that crude Latin, which would make no sense if he was the original author. If he could compose in reasonably good Greek, his 2nd language, why would he have trouble translating it into decent Latin?

Now your other suggestion, that the work "circulated among a small group of people and was published anonymously and recently" is, IMHO, closer to the mark, but only if you meant the Latin AH. I think the Greek AH probably circulated widely in Gaul, Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria, but not nearly as much in the west (N. Africa, Italy, Hispania) where Latin was spoken as the primary language and Greek far less so. Someone who had a copy of Greek AH decided to create a Latin translation for the edification of his brothers in the west. He wasn't very sophisticated, though, and his translation was "wooden" and hard to follow at points, but it was literal. In fact, Greek mss of NT books have survived in which there are interlinear Latin glosses of each Greek word. If someone had done this with a copy of Greek AH, the Latin translation was just the "crib translation" based on those interlinear glosses.

DCH

aa5874

One cannot just accept any writing of the Church as authentic or fundamentally historical especially when dealing with events with respect to Jesus of the NT, the disciples, the apostles, Peter the supposed bishop of Rome, Paul and the so-called heretic Marcion.

It can be shown that more than one writer used the name "Tertullian".

The writer named "Tertullian" attributed to "Ad Nationes" is not the same writer of "Against Marcion".

"Against Marcion" is fundamentally a non-historical document and is even contradicted by other writings under the very name "Tertullian" and other apologetic sources. "On the Flesh of Christ" fundamentally contradicts "Against Marcion".

Both Tertullian" and "Irenaeus" are completely wrong about the dating, authorship and chronology of the NT Canon and appear to have produced fiction when they wrote that Marcion mutilated gLuke and the Pauline writings.

Based on Justin there were no gospel called gLuke and there were no Pauline writings and Acts of the Apostles. Even Hippolytus and Origen CONTRADICT "Tertullian" and "Irenaeus".

Some of the writings of Tertullian and Irenaeus were INVENTED for the "history of the Church". The claim by "Tertullian" and "Irenaeus" that the apostle Peter was a Bishop of Rome is UTTER FICTION.

The apostle Peter was a fictitious character in the fabricated Jesus stories.

And ALL who met the fiction called Peter are like him. "Paul" met the fiction bishop Peter in the writings of Tertullian and Irenaeus.

PhilosopherJay

Hi DCHindley,

If Tertullian wrote Against Heresies, it would have been the Greek version that he wrote.

According to Mark Timothy Riley, we know the Greek version of Against Heresies, from some excerpts given by Epiphanius and Hypolytus from the Greek version. The entire version that has survived is in Latin and it appears that it is a bad translation from that original good Greek work. There is no reason to suggest that Tertullian did the bad Latin translation. The question is does Tertullian in his Latin Against Valentinus copy from the Greek or Latin version of Against Heresies.

Riley does not think that Tertullian used the bad Latin translation. Rather he proposes that Tertullian used the Greek original:

Tertullian's Latin copying of Against Heresies in Against Valentinus is adaptive and free while whoever translated Against Heresies into Latin translated it into stilted Latin.

Apparently, previous Scholars had supposed that Tertullian copied the bad Latin translation because at two points the same unusual expressions are used in both. Riley writes:

In other words, Riley thinks that the translations done are not so unusual that two independent translators could not have hit on it without one consulting the other.

If Tertullian had done Against Heresies in Greek. We should expect a good "adaptive and free" translation into Latin in his Against Valentinus
That, at least according to Riley, is what we see.


Warmly,

Jay Raskin